


Ars Poetica

by Lirazel



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-11
Updated: 2009-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of her life with Spike, Buffy realizes, is written in poetry, not prose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was my contribution to Seasonal Spuffy on livejournal and shows moments that define Buffy and Spike's relationship from "Becoming Part II" past the end of "Not Fade Away."  Canon all through _BtVS_ ; ignores the comics and "The Girl in Question."
> 
> The poems featured in this chapter are "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost and "The Truth of a Woman" by Sir Walter Scott.  
> 

_If It Had to Perish Twice_   


 

Just when she thinks the whole night can’t get any more bizarre, Spike starts quoting _poetry_.  Isn’t it weird enough that she’s walking side by side with her mortal enemy, no stakes or bumpies in sight ( _though that doesn’t mean that her hand isn’t hovering near the familiar weapon in her pocket_ ) toward her _house_ , where she’s going to give him an invitation to enter the place where she and her mom live, and then have a war council about how they’re going to stop the love of her life from sucking the world into hell?  Is it too much to ask that said mortal enemy not make the whole night even more wiggins-inducing by quoting poetry like it’s the most natural thing in the world?

 

And making it even weirder is _when_ he does it.  They’re walking along almost sideways so they can keep their eyes on each other—Happy Meals with legs or no, she doesn’t trust him as far as…well, she could throw him pretty far.  Superpowers, and all that.  So that metaphor doesn’t work. 

 

She’s musing on just what metaphor _would_ work for this beyond-weird situation when a demon pops out from behind a parked van, a big green one, all bumpy and slightly slimy—the demon, not the van, although it’s not in great shape either and could really use a wash.  Buffy sighs long-sufferingly and falls into fighting stance.  “Can we make this quick?” she asks wearily as it roars in her face.  “I’ve got more important evil to deal with tonight.”

 

But before the demon can lunge at her, a blur of black and white and red (all over!  Like a newspaper!  Yes, she may be slightly loopy from weariness, thanks for asking.  It’s been a long day) lunges at it.

 

She doesn’t even move.  She just kind of stands there slack jawed and watches Spike toy with the demon.  She’s never actually seen him fight before; she’s always been the one fighting him, except for a bit in the church with Kendra ( _don’tthinkaboutherdon’tthinkaboutherdon’tthinkaboutherlyingdeadonthelibraryfloor_ ), though she kind of had her hands full during the whole thing—not exactly the best time for studying Spike’s fighting style.  She’s certainly never seen him like this.  Wasn’t he in a wheelchair just a few days ago?  One _she_ put him in?

 

It’s kind of…impressive.  She’s never seen anyone move quite like this before, brutal and quick as lightning but almost…sinuous.  He fights more gracefully than most people dance, and as she watches him, she feels the same way she feels when she watches Kristi Yamaguchi ice-skating: holding her breath because there’s no way anyone can possibly keep up that level of perfection without slipping.  But the slip never comes.

 

It takes her longer than she’ll ever admit to finally shake herself out of her fascination,  and as soon as she does, she feels irritation explode inside her.  How dare he distract her from what’s important!  Worse still….

 

“Spike!  We don’t have time for this!  Play some other time!”

 

He shoots her a dirty look over his shoulder as he ducks a swipe of massive claws, then turns his attention back to the demon.  “Sorry, mate.  Got a hot date I can’t be late for.”

 

And then he reaches out, grabs the massive bumpy head in both hands, and wrenches.  It makes a horrible sound—the crack of bone, the grate of scales, the dying whine of the demon—and collapses to the ground.

 

Spike turns to her and his bumpies fall away, leaving behind a grin so big that it makes her slightly uncomfortable: he looks almost…human.  “Oh, yeah.  I still got it,” he says with great satisfaction, starting to saunter down the street.

 

She has to admit to herself that he certainly does.  She doesn’t, however, have to admit it to him.  “Oh, yeah.  You’re the Big Bad.  What was that all about?” she demands as she hurries to catch up with him.  “I was going to take care of it.  Why’d you fight it?  Isn’t that against some sort of demon code?”

 

He snorts.  “There is no demon code, cutie.  What would be the fun in being a demon if there were?”

 

She wrinkles her nose at the thought of there being any fun in being a demon.  “ _Spike_.  Why?”

 

He sighs, put upon.  “Haven’t had much of a challenge since I healed up.  Wanted to check and see if I’m up to par.”

 

“Oh.”  Well, that’s pretty reasonable, actually.

 

“That and that was a Korvak demon.  Their slime is fatal to humans.”

 

 _That’s_ not.  “You did it to save me?”

 

“Slayer.  Did you miss the part where I need you to stop Angelus and get Dru back?  You turn into a pus ball and then explode because of some demon slime, I have to take them both on by myself.  Something I’ll do if necessary but don’t particularly relish.  See?”

 

She can’t think of anything to say to that, but she turns sulky after that, his buoyant mood grating on her understandably sensitive nerves.  She fantasizes about smashing his face in, staking him so that Drusilla will know just what it feels like to lose someone you care about ( _don’tthinkaboutKendradon’tthinkaboutKendra_ ).  Spike, however, is in the best mood she’s ever seen him in.

 

“I got something for you, Slayer,” he announces as he walks along the edge of the sidewalk like it’s a balance beam, arms spread for balance like a little boy.  She’s about to make a snarky comment about not being interested in fangs, but he continues.

 

 _“Some say the world will end in fire,_

 _Some say in ice._

 _From what I’ve tasted of desire_

 _I hold with those who favor fire._

 _But if it had to perish twice,_

 _I think I know enough of hate_

 _To say that for destruction ice_

 _Is also great_

 _And would suffice.”_

 

He finishes, drops off the sidewalk onto the street, and stares at her expectantly.  For the umpteenth time that night, she gapes at him.

 

“Were you quoting _poetry_?” she sputters finally after a few moments of expectant silence.

 

“It’s Frost, you stupid bint.  Don’t you know Frost?”

 

She does, actually.  She totally pays attention in English class…on occasion.  There’s the ridiculously over-quoted ones about roads and walls, the pretty one about woods and miles go, and the one that broke her heart: a conversation between a couple that’s lost a child.  That one made her want to cry, which freaked her out, because she never thought poetry could make her want to cry.  But she doesn’t tell him any of that.

 

“What do you _mean_ , that one was for me?”  She’s kind of furious, though she doesn’t know why.

 

“Think about it, Slayer.  World’s about to end because you and lover-boy couldn’t keep your pants zipped.”  Fury and pain bubble up inside her so quickly that she wants to launch herself at him, beat him and his stupid mouth that’s always saying what she doesn’t want to hear into ground beef.  But she doesn’t.  “That’s fire—desire.  But it could also be ice—hate, right?  Now the Great Poof hates you, gonna destroy the whole world, just ‘cause you’re in it.  Fire, ice.  Either one, world’s going to end.”

 

“No.  It.  _Isn’t_ ,” she grits out.  “It’s _not_.  We’re going to stop it.  That poem is completely irrelevant.”

 

“But pretty.  Bet you think it’s pretty, pet.”

 

She’d never imagined that a poem could make her furious, any more than she imagined one could make her cry.  And she _really_ never imagined that the same one that could make her so angry would also be so, as he says, _pretty_.  It makes her even more furious.

 

She lashes out, her fist flying up and meeting his nose with a satisfying crunch before she can even think about it.  “Don’t you say one more thing to me unless absolutely necessary, do you understand me?”  It’s her quiet, deadly voice, one she doesn’t use often, but apparently it’s intimidating enough that Spike knows she means business.

 

When he stops groaning and cursing and clutching his nose, he says, “All right, Slayer.  No need to go after the nose.”

 

But maybe he knows that he’s gone too far, because he doesn’t try to hit her back.  And more than that, he stays silent as they fall back into their earlier pattern of watching each other, and he doesn’t say a thing until they reach the her house and her mom pulls up in the driveway.  And that’s when the night goes to hell all over again.

 

\--

 

 _Write in the Dust_

 

“Oh, no,” Buffy groans.  Not again.”

 

Angel gives her a startled little look, which she ignores in favor of a huge eye roll in Spike’s direction.  Not that he’s paying the last bit of attention.  Instead, he’s paused— _again_ —in their trip toward the magic shop and has propped himself up against a telephone pole, slurring drunkenly.

 

 _“Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust –_

 _Write the characters in the dust;_

 _Stamp them on the running stream,_

 _Print them on the moon’s pale beam,_

 _And each evanescent letter…”_

 

He wobbles, unbalanced, and nearly topples over when he punctuates the last few words with a sharp jab of his finger, but manages to stay upright long enough to continue.

 

 _“…Shall be clearer, firmer, better,_

 _And more permanent, I ween,_

 _Than the thing those letters mean.”_

 Oh, God.  Now he’s complaining about Drusilla again.  They’ll _never_ get him to shut up now. Buffy marches over to him, kicks one of his legs.  It gives, and he collapses onto the ground, still leaning against the telephone pole.  “Oi, Slayer!  What was that for?” “I do not have time to deal with you and your drunken poetry kicks right now.  I want to have found Willow and Xander three hours ago.  If you don’t get off your scrawny white English ass, I will stake you.” “You’ll never find ‘em without me,” he protests.  “And if I want to lament my lost love, I can.”  With a deep breath, he continues his recitation. 

 _“I have strain'd the spider's thread_

 _'Gainst the promise of a maid;_

 _I have weigh'd a grain of sand'_

 _Gainst her plight of heart and hand;_

 _I told my true love of the token,_

 _How her faith proved light, and her word was broken:_

 _Again her word and truth she plight,_

 _And I believed them again ere night.”_

 

Buffy groans and glances back at Angel, but he’s just looking vaguely amused.  Which is weird, because she really hasn’t seen him look anything but pained or heartbroken since he came back from hell.  Which she sent him to.  Which reminds her…

 

Honestly, how dare Spike, a soulless monster completely incapable of love, moan and groan and recite ridiculous poetry just because that nutcase left him when she really does love Angel and can never be with him?

 

She reaches down and grabs Spike’s arm, jerking him to his feet and then releasing him as quickly as she can to avoid any prolonged contact with his general nastiness.  “Okay, Spike.  First off, you’re a vampire, and so is Dru.  Breaking your word is what you _do_.”

 

“Hey!  Told you I’d help you save the world, didn’t I?  And I did.”

 

“Spike, you left me there to die.”

 

He laughs—nearly a giggle, and says, “Yeah…” like he’s thinking back on the moment fondly.  She raises her stake threateningly and he coughs, then corrects himself.  “Yeah, but the deal was to make sure you didn’t have to face them both alone.  I got Dru off your hands so you could focus on Peaches here.  And you took good care of him, didn’t you?  Sent him straight to hell, right quick.”

 

She feels like she can’t breathe, even as she glances over at Angel, who is standing there stony-faced, all traces of humor gone now.  Stupid jerk—Spike, not Angel.  How dare he bring that up?

 

“Second of all, why don’t you just find a new girl like any normal guy would do?  Won’t this stupid love potion defeat the whole point of being with someone?  Who wants to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with you?”

 

“You don’t get it, you stupid bint.  I _love_ her.  I’m not some namby-pamby wanker who can just get over her.  Our love is _eternal_.”

 

“Spike, you’re a vampire.  You _can’t_ love.”  She hears a small noise behind her and knows she’s hurt Angel.  Now it’s her turn to quickly correct herself. “I mean, you can’t love without a soul.”

 

Suddenly, Spike looks straight at her, eyes scarily intense, and announces in a tone far too lucid for Buffy’s comfort, “One day, that ignorant assumption is going to bite you in the ass, Slayer.  You’ll find out you’re wrong, and you’ll regret all those times you told yourself those lies just to make your own life a little bit less confusing.  Till then…”  The intense look vanishes from his eyes, leaving them slightly bleary again.  “Till then…shut your mouth unless you want to find your friends in three weeks dead of starvation and dehydration.”

 

With that, he lurches up straighter and starts saunter off toward the center of town again.  Buffy stares after him, strangely shaky, for a long, pensive moment, till she’s jarred out of her brown study by Angel’s hand on her arm. 

 

“Buffy,” he says quietly, “he’s just trying to play you.  It’s Spike.  That’s what he does.  He doesn’t have a soul—none of them do.  Don’t take anything he says seriously.”

 

She can’t quite meet his eyes, not after Spike reminded her of that day in the mansion when she kissed Angel so sweetly, told him to close his eyes, and shoved a sword in his heart.  Guilt and confusion and longing burn fiercely inside her.  “Why not?” she whispers.

 

“Because I never want you to be fighting one of them and wonder if they have some redeeming quality about them.  If you hesitate, you end up dead.  And I won’t watch that happen again.”  When she still doesn’t look up at him, his hand slips under her chin, tilts it up so that she’ll meet his eyes.  “I only want you to be safe.  I know we can’t…but I still care about you.  I always will.”

 

She awkwardly stretches her mouth into a smile, still unsettled by this whole night and by Spike’s words, spoken with an air of a prophet imparting divine revelation.  “I know that.”

 

He smiles then, tentatively.  “Come on.  It’s going to take both of us to keep Spike from reminiscing again and delaying us still more.”

 

She falls into step beside him as she has a million times before, following after the glow of Spike’s stupid radioactive hair as it shines in the lamplight, but she notices that her pace doesn’t quite match his as it used to.  She wonders if that happened when he lost his soul or if it’s a new development.  She doubts she’ll ever know.

 

Still, she can’t shake the feeling of uneasiness.  Spike has a way of shaking her foundations.  She really hopes that this time when he leaves town, he’ll stay gone.  She doesn’t know how much more foundation-shaking she can handle.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems featured in this chapter are Portia's speech from _The Merchant of Venice_ by William Shakespeare and "Death is a dialogue between" by Emily Dickinson.

_Twice Blest_

  
 “Always knew you were a kinky one, Slayer—and that you had a thing for me.  Haven’t hardly been in the house for more’n a few hours, and you’re already chaining me up.”  Spike jangles the chains around his wrists experimentally as she finishes locking the ones around his ankles. 

“Oh, yes, Spike.  You’ve finally figured me out.  This is all part of my elaborate plan to put you at my sexual mercy.  The kidnapping, you getting all emasculated—“ 

“Hey!” 

“—you coming to me for help, the Chumash interruptions—I orchestrated it all with my powerful magic spells.” 

“Well, you _have_ got a witch workin’ for you.” 

“I will now proceed to go into the other room, dress up in a leather corset, and come back here and have my wicked way with you.” 

Silence.  Then: “While you’re down there, love, would you mind making a few adjustments a little further up?” 

Buffy looks up from his boots to his face, startled.  He nods about half between said boots and face, and she obediently looks. And promptly flushes scarlet.  “Spike!  You pig!  You’re absolutely disgusting!  I should stake you now!”

 “ _You_ were the one mentioned corsets and bondage, Slayer.  Shouldn’t be complaining if a man has a reaction to the mental picture _you_ created.  ‘Sides.  ‘d rather be the one stakin’ you.” “Okay, that’s it.”  She stands and storms over to the bathroom door. “Where are you going?” Spike yelps. 

“I’m getting as far away from your perverted presence as possible.  I think the Andromeda galaxy would be too close.” 

“But you are comin’ back, aren’t you?”  His tone is that particular brand of whining that she had previously thought only small children and smaller dogs were capable of.  “Bringing me some blood?  I’m _hungry_ , Slayer!” 

“I’ll think about it.  Once I’ve bleached my brain.” 

“And they say _I’m_ evil!” 

“Spike, _you_ say you’re evil.” 

“Well, I am.  But apparently not nearly as evil as you are!  Supposed to be a warrior of light, aren’t you?  All things soft and fuzzy?  And you don’t have a drop of mercy in you!” 

“I didn’t kill you when you showed up at the door interrupting my Thanksgiving.  I’d say that’s plenty merciful.  Now if you shut up, I’ll leave, and once I’m far enough away from your corrupting influence, I might just think about getting you some blood.  _Maybe_.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Spike snipes as she opens the door.  “You’re real merciful.”  She glances back in time to see him lean his head against the back of the tub, sigh profoundly and intone solemnly.

 _“The quality of mercy is not strain'd,_

 _It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven_

 _Upon the place beneath; it is twice blest,”_ he says as seriously as a preacher might. 

Buffy rolls her eyes“Oh, goodie.  Yet another reason to walk away from you.  You’re doing that weird poetry thing again.  Well, have fun with that.” 

Then, she steps outside and slams the door behind her. 

“Oh, Buffy.  Good.  He’s secure then?” Giles asks as he steps out of the kitchen. 

“As magically-reinforced chains can make him.  He’s not getting away.  Which reminds me.  Why do you have magically reinforced chains anyway?” 

She would _swear_ that he blushes as he coughs and turns away.  “Watcher necessity.  One never knows when such things could come in handy.” 

“Right.  Where did I put the muffin tins?” 

“I believe they’re in the sink.  What do you intend to do about Spike?” 

Just as she’s about to reply, a bellow blasts out from behind the closed door of the bathroom. 

 _“It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:_

 _'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes_

 _The throned monarch better than his crown…”_

“Shut up, Spike!” Buffy yells back.

 

“Good Lord.  Is Spike quoting _Shakespeare_?” Giles demands in a tone that wouldn’t have been out of place if he’d been asking whether someone was using his books as kindling to build a fire to make ‘Smores.

 

“Huh?  Is that who that is?  I guess,” she replies as she starts collecting the utensils she’d brought over from her mother’s kitchen.  “Where’d you put the big bowl?”

 

“Buffy.  There’s a vampire chained in my bathtub quoting _The Merchant of Venice_.  And you aren’t just the slightest bit…unsettled by this?”

 

Again, Spike’s voice can be heard echoing off the tile in the bathroom, accompanied by the clunk of chains against the porcelain tub.

 

 _“His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,_

 _The attribute to awe and majesty,_

 _Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;_

 _But mercy is above this sceptred sway…”_

 

“Oh, it’s just a thing Spike does.  He gets excited, he starts quoting poetry.  He gets morose, he starts quoting poetry.”  She sights the large mixing bowl perched precariously on the top of the bookshelf.  Now how did that get up there?  “Never mind; I found it.” 

 

“Buffy, do you even know what ‘morose’ means?”

 

She glares at him.  “Yes, _Giles._   I may not talk like my diapers were made of tweed, but I’m not stupid.”

 

“Yes.  Quite.  Forgive me for underestimating you.”

 

 _“…It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,_

 _It is an attribute to God himself;_

 _And earthly power doth then show likest God's_

 _When mercy seasons justice.”_

 

Buffy lets out a long-suffering sigh.  “He will so totally keep that up all night.  He _knows_ how much it annoys me.”

 

“But, Buffy, _why_ is he quoting Shakespeare?”

 

“Because he lives to torture me.”  She pulls a chair over from the table and clambers up so that she can reach the bowl.  “Leave him to stew for a few hours, then give him a raw steak or something,” she instructs as she hops down onto the floor.  “I’ll pick up some blood in the morning before I swing by here.”

 

“You’re leaving me alone with him?”

 

“Giles, you’re a big bad Watcher with a crossbow.  Besides, he’s being all obsessed with Shakespeare.  Isn’t that what English people do?  So you can do it together.  Now, I’ve had a very long day, what with the cooking and the moral crises and the making bears and such, so am going home and going.  To.  Bed.  Good _night_.”

 

“Buffy—“

 

“ _SLAYER_!”

 

“Hey.  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!” she says triumphantly, remembering that Shakespeare came up with that quote, too.  And with that, she slams the door behind her.

\--

 _A Dialogue Between the Spirit and the Dust_

 

She lets herself into the empty house a few minutes before dawn.  Angel’s gone, back to L.A., despite all his words about staying as long as she needs him.  He would have stayed longer, she knows, but he wouldn’t stay forever, and she knew that if he stayed any-longer-but-not-forever, the pain would be that much greater when he finally did leave.  So she told him to go.  Not something she ever imagined she would do, but then, she never imagined having to bury her mother or face down a hellgod.  Her life is about necessity now, not choice.

 

The house is cold.  She’s let herself in thousands of times nearly this early in the morning, when all the lights are out and Mom and Dawn are safe in bed, either climbing through the window or drawing the front door closed so slowly and softly that the sound of it closing wouldn’t wake Mom and Dawn.  Her mother and sister are ( _ **were** , she reminds herself.  She has to refer to her mom in past tense now_) both quiet sleepers; all those thousands of times she returned home, the house might as well have been empty for all she could tell: silence and darkness.  This moment should feel like those. 

 

But it doesn’t.  Somehow, she can feel that the house is empty.  Somehow, the absence ( _of Dawn, at Willow’s; of Mom, gone forever_ ) is so tangible that it’s nearly suffocating.

 

She flips on the light in the hallways.  Steps into the dining room for a moment, flips on the one there.  Finds the switch in the living room, turns on every lamp, even the decorative ones that are never really used.  Heads to the kitchen, does the same thing.

 

Bodies are strange, she thinks.  Corpses, really.  She’s never spent much time considering it, but at this moment she is so thankful that whoever designed vampires did it the way he ( _she? it?_ ) did. 

 

Dust.  She stakes them, they turn to dust.  Other demons sometimes melt away or dissolve.  Mostly, they just lay there and rot, and she has to haul them to a dumpster or behind a clump of bushes for the cemetery caretaker to find and dispose of.  But that’s okay.  Those bodies don’t bother her.  They never looked human to begin with, and after death they look like pieces constructed for movies, the leftovers from some special effects extravaganza, made of plastic and other substances that start with the prefix poly-or end with the suffix –cone. 

 

But vampires.  They look human.  Or, they do without their bumpies.  Most of the ones she slays are in game face and look alien enough that it doesn’t even make her pause.  But there have been times—not very often, but common enough that she gets nightmares about them—when she’s staked one while it’s wearing the mask of its human face ( _strange, strange: there have only ever been two vampires that made her feel as though she was looking at their real faces when they looked human; with Angel, with Spike, the bumpies were the mask_ ).  The false humanity there always made her pause—could have gotten her killed, though it never has ( _the Master looked anything but human_ ). 

 

But she can do it.  Thrust that stake into that body because she knows that she won’t have to deal with a corpse later.  It will just…fall away, blow in the wind, no evidence left behind of the death her hands has wrought.

 

But it wasn’t like that with Mom.  There was that body, a shell, cold and empty and so very, very _there_.  Physical, solid, unignorable.  Present.  Even if every single thing that made that physicality Joyce Summers was gone forever. 

 

Her hands tremble as she turns on the lights over the sink.  She’s about to turn on the stereo, drown out the silence this time as, just a few weeks ago, she drowned out the sound of Mom’s ranting.  But then she pauses.

 

There’s a new piece of paper hanging on the refrigerator, held up by a Snoopy magnet.  The paper is off-white, a little wrinkled, and she knows it wasn’t there before she left because she stood and stared at the calendar beside it for fifteen minutes this morning, looking at all the items written in her mom’s handwriting, all the things that Joyce Summers had planned but would now never do.

 

She shoves that thought aside and removes the magnet, holds the paper in her hands, scans the handwriting.  It’s cramped, small, like the writer was trying to disguise the fact that it’s actually beautiful script.  There’s only one person she knows who can write like that, and only one person she knows who would leave a poem for her to find.  Because that’s what this is.  A poem.

 

She reads the words slowly, unsure of whether she’ll be able to find any comfort in them or if Spike’s demon has made him so insensitive that it will end up hurting more.  Despite all her protestations, she knows that he wouldn’t hurt her purposefully, especially at a time like this, and besides, she knows he always liked Mom.  But still…demon, right?  Who knows whether he’ll get this right or not?

 

 _DEATH is a dialogue between_

 _The spirit and the dust._

 _“Dissolve,” says Death. The Spirit, “Sir,_

 _I have another trust.”_

 _Death doubts it, argues from the ground._

 _The Spirit turns away,_

 _Just laying off, for evidence,_

 _An overcoat of clay._

 _-Emily Dickinson_

 

She stumbles out into the living room, collapses onto the armchair.  But all she can see is the couch, the one Mom was lying on when she….  So she stands up, turns the chair around to face the kitchen door.  Curls up in it, clutching the paper close to her as she trembles so violently her teeth chatter.  Like she’s cold.  And she is.  But this cold is somewhere else, not her body.  Somewhere deeper.

 

Dust.  Mom will be dust, too.  Like the vampires Buffy fights every night, like the vamp dust that blows away.  Spike gets that, of course.  None but a vampire could know better.  That hurts.

 

But she knows that he was trying to comfort her, and in a way, he has.  If even a soulless vampire can believe that Mom’s spirit, the thing that made her Joyce, has defeated the inevitability of dust…maybe she can, too.

 

The words echo in her ears and drown out the sound of her own weeping.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems featured in this chapter are "Resume" by Dorothy Parker, "Up" by Margaret Atwood, and "i like my body when it is with your" by e.e. cummings.

_Might As Well_   


The job search, once again, has been a bust.  The interviewer at the department store told her straight out that she didn’t have any skills, and Buffy had wanted to show that sour-mouthed know-it-all _every last one_ of her skills—or at least the ones involving sharp objects.  Every potential employer marked off the list Willow helped her make brings her one step closer to her absolute last resort, and she swore to herself that she would never set foot in a Doublemeat Palace, much less actually work there.  Still, there are only a few more names on the list, and if those don’t pan out….

 

When she lets herself in the house, she bypasses the kitchen, though her stomach is growling.  All she wants is a shower and then to fall into bed and wallow.  She deserves a little wallowing time.  But she isn’t going to get it tonight.

 

Because taped to her bathroom mirror is a piece of paper, Dawn’s loopy handwriting swirling across her old Hello Kitty stationary that Buffy hasn’t seen her use in years.  Probably an “I’m not talking to you” note or a request for more Pizza Bites next time Buffy makes a grocery run ( _well, that’s not going to happen.  Those things are too expensive even with a coupon_ ).

 

But it’s nothing of the sort.

 

 _Razors pain you;_

 _Rivers are damp;_

 _Acids stain you;_

 _And drugs cause cramp._

 _Guns aren't lawful;_

 _Nooses give;_

 _Gas smells awful;_

 _You might as well live._

 

Buffy stares at the words a moment, then giggles.  Giggles harder.  Laughs straight out.  Throws her head back.   Shakes so hard she almost has to grab hold of the sink for balance.

 

She isn’t quite sure when the tears start sliding in, but she suddenly discovers she’s laughing and crying at the same time.

 

Wiping her cheeks, she heads to Dawn’s room.  Little sis is laying on the bed, sprawled out on the too-pink sheets ( _if she had the money, Buffy would take her out and let her buy all new decorations for her room; despite the way they all treat her, Dawn isn’t a little girl anymore_ ), a textbook open in front of her, but she’s bobbing her head to some too-catchy bubblegum tune, so she probably isn’t actually getting anything constructive done.

 

“What’s this?”  Buffy asks, holding up the pink piece of paper.

 

Dawn raises and lowers her eyebrows eloquently, communicating that she can’t hear over the blare of the music.  Buffy rolls her eyes.  The music isn’t _that_ loud.  Without rising from her stomach, Dawn contorts her body till she can reach the stereo, flips it off.

 

Blessed silence.

 

“What was that, Buffy?” she asks, far too innocently.

 

Another eye roll.  “This.  What is it?”

 

“It’s a poem.”

 

“I know it’s a poem.  I didn’t actually _fail_ English.  Why was said poem on my bathroom mirror?”

 

“I just thought you needed the reminder.  Heaven might be great, but the actual dying process?  Yeesh.”

 

Buffy feels a lance of pain shoot through her; nobody ever mentions heaven— _except Spike, back when we actually talked_ —but count on her little sister to be completely irreverent about the whole thing.

 

Well, that’s not far.  When her little song-and-dance routine finally dropped the bombshell, Dawn’s reaction had been a mixture of hurt that she hadn’t been told and sympathy for what Buffy had lost.  But that was weeks ago.  And maybe a little irreverence is what she needs right now.  Everything is so serious, so heavy, so dark all the time.  And after all, it did make her laugh ( _even if it also made her cry: she can’t seem to do anything purely these days_ ).

 

Anyways, better to change the subject.

 

“Since when do you read poetry?”

 

“Since this summer.  Spike was always reading it, tried to get me to.  I said I didn’t like it because nobody ever just _said_ anything, it was all metaphor and simile and other things you actually have to take classes to learn to understand.  I just wanted the truth.  Just right out.  So he gave me this.”

 

She rummages around in the tangle of the bedsheets, triumphantly holds up a paperback, the name Dorothy Parker prominently displayed on the front.

 

“I like her.  Her poems are short and she never plays around with the truth.  She just says things.”

 

“Spike gave you that?”

 

Now it’s Dawn’s turn to roll her eyes.  “Don’t worry, Buffy.  He bought it from the used bookstore by the bakery.  So, no, you don’t have an excuse to stake him.”

 

Well, that’s both a relief and a disappointment ( _if she made with the staking, his delicious body that does so many sinful, distracting things to hers would be blowin’ in the wind.  But if she could, maybe she’d be able to break free from this sick obsession.  Either way she wins; either way she loses.  Story of her life_ ).

 

“He read poetry to you this summer?”  No one’s talked to her at all about what the summer was like with her…gone ( _except for Spike and his every night I save you that still makes her heart clench when she thinks about his agonized whispers_ ).

 

Dawn glances down at the pen she’s twirling around in her hand.  “Yeah.  We watched cartoons and bad soap operas and old black and white movies that were actually pretty cool.  He ate my kitchen experiments and taught me how to play every card game known to man—or vampire.  But I really liked it when he read to me.  He has a nice voice, you know, and that accent.”

 

Oh, yes.  She knows all too well just how nice that voice is, the way it sounds rasping nasty, forbidden words in her ears, the triumphant surrender of it when he shouts her name as he comes, the way it catches when he tells her for the seven hundred and twelfth ( _she doesn’t count, really.  She doesn’t_ ) time that he loves her.  She suddenly can’t let herself hear anymore, no more of his words, no more of Dawn’s: she can’t allow herself to know that her little sister got nearly as sucked in by his act as Buffy herself.  It’s okay ( _it really isn’t_ ) for her to get all corrupted by Spike— _there’s something wrong with me; I came back wrong_ —but her innocent little sister?  ( _She can’t let herself believed, even for a moment, that he might genuinely care about Dawn; that would rock her worldview far too much, and all her other foundations have already been ripped away.  Those absolutes are the things she’s still clinging to_ ).

 

“I don’t think you should see him anymore.”

 

Dawn’s head shoots up, her eyes startled.  “ _What_?”

 

Buffy tries to make her voice do that calm-but-firm tone Mom used to be so good at, and she thinks she accomplishes it reasonably well.  “I said I don’t think you should see him anymore.”

 

“Did you hear a word I said?  He was good to me!  Is this backwards day?  That’s supposed to get a reaction that’s the _opposite_ of the one you just had!”

 

Buffy ignores her.  If she doesn’t have the strength to cut herself off, to deny herself the feel of Spike’s body over, under, in hers, the sight of his eyes dark with passion, the sound of his voice, she can at least have the will to keep her little sister away from him.  The old Buffy would never have let Spike touch her— _ever_ —and that Buffy may be lost to her, but enough of her remains to keep him away from Dawn.

 

“Dawn, you know perfectly well that a vampire isn’t friend material.  If you see him again, I won’t let you see Janice anymore.”

 

“But that’s not fair!”

 

Mom said it a thousand times while Buffy was growing up, and it’s long since become Buffy’s own motto.  “Life’s not fair.”

 

Silence stretches tense between them for a long moment.  When Dawn finally speaks, her voice is steely.

 

“Get.  Out.”

 

Buffy gets.

 

\--

 

 _Nothing So Simple_

 

Spike, at least, has more subtlety.  She never imagined thinking that, but then again, if there’s any creature in the universe who has less subtlety than Spike, it’s definitely a teenage girl.

 

So while Dawn’s poem—and the revelations that came along with it—are as straightforward as Buffy could imagine, Spike’s, when it comes, hurts far more.

 

Yeah, she’d sworn to herself she’d never work at the DMP, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  The days are full of the smell of burnt grease, the whine of impatient customers, the throbbing of aching feet.  The only thing she has to look forward to is the few hours she steals in Spike’s arms, wrapped in his cool cleanness ( _it’s so hard to remember when she’s tasting his skin that he isn’t as clean as he seems, that there’s nothing clean in him at all_ ).  She fantasizes all day, and on the worse days, she practically runs through her afternoon/night routine to get to him.

 

This has been one of those days.  She doesn’t even swing home to take a shower, nor does she make herself go through the motions of patrolling.  Sure, she stakes two fledglings and scares away a mugger about to attack a little old lady on the way, but she heads straight to Spike’s crypt, and this time she doesn’t even make excuses for herself. 

 

Nor does she give reasons to him: she begins stripping as soon as she slams the door behind her, ignoring the way his eyes gleam as he stands from where he was slumped in the chair in front of the television.  She marches up to him when she’s in her underwear, pushes the button-down shirt aside, peels the t-shirt off his perfect chest, then shoves him toward the trapdoor to the lower level.

 

Later, the gasps not yet died down and the sweat not yet dried from her skin, she forces her protesting body to stand ( _all she really wants to do is to curl up beside him and let him hold her while she sleeps, but she knows that wanting that from a soulless monster is just sick, and to surrender to that desire would make her a far worse monster than having sex with him already does_ ), knowing that she has to leave.  But as she bends to find her bra ( _her underwear’s gone for good_ ), he catches her elbow.

 

“Slayer?  Do me a favor?”

 

“Spike, I already went down on you, and I need to go home and check on Dawn—“

 

For a moment, his eyes flash with something that might be fury and is definitely hurt, but then it falls away as quickly as it appeared.  “Ever occur to you, _Slayer_ , that I do occasionally think with my other head?  The one with the brain?”

 

There are about a million retorts to that, but she’s still feeling boneless from their latest shag session, and if she doesn’t leave now, she’ll just collapse here and never make it home.  “What do you _want_ , Spike?”

 

“Read this for me.”

 

She stares at the book he’s holding out to her, doesn’t even see what’s on the open page.  “ _What_?”

 

“Just…I found it today and thought of you.  Of how you’re feeling.  I think it might help you.”

 

Suspiciously, she takes it from him, trying not to remember the night after Mom’s funeral when his borrowed words were just exactly the ones she needed.  He didn’t fix the pain then, didn’t banish it, but it did help and…

 

She takes a deep breath and begins to scan the words.

 

 _You wake up filled with dread._

 _There seems no reason for it._

 

She looks up at him quickly, searching for some ulterior motive, but his eyes are merely expectant.  She forces herself to look down again.

 

 _Morning light sifts through the window,_

 _there is birdsong,_

 _you can’t get out of bed._

 _Her eyes start to prick; she ignores them._

 _It’s something about the crumpled sheets_

 _hanging over the edge like jungle_

 _foliage, the terry slippers gaping_

 _their dark pink mouths for your feet,_

 _the unseen breakfast—some of it_

 _in the refrigerator you do not dare_

 _to open—you will not dare to eat._

 _What prevents you?  The future.  The future tense,_

 _immense as outer space._

 

“Immense as outer space.”  She barely breathes the words aloud, but there’s so much _truth_ in them.  That’s the way it feels: the whole future spread out before her and all it is is Doublemeat Palace days and slaying nights.  She doesn’t even allow herself the balm of considering that she’ll also have these islands of escape, these little moments with Spike.  No, she’ll find the strength to walk away.  Someday soon.

 

She knows she will die again, and soon.

 

 _You could get lost there._

 _No.  Nothing so simple.  The past, its density_

 _and drowned events pressing you down,_

 _like sea water, like gelatin_

 _filling your lungs instead of air._

 

Yes.  Drowning.  She’s drowned once before, knows exactly the way lungs burst for air.  Yes, that’s what every day feels like now.

 

 _Forget all that and let’s get up._

 _Try moving your arm._

 _Try moving your head._

 _Pretend the house is on fire_

 _and you must run or burn._

 _No, that one’s useless._

 _It’s never worked before._

 

Those aren’t exactly her lies, but they’re close.  When she doesn’t feel that she can get out of bed at all, doesn’t think she can leave behind the warm cocoon of her sheets, she catalogues all those who have died because of her and reminds herself that there will be more added to the list if she doesn’t get up.

 

It does work, actually.  Sometimes.

 

 _Where is it coming from, this echo,_

 _this huge No that surrounds you,_

 _silent as the folds of the yellow_

 _curtains, mute as the cheerful_

 _Mexican bowls with its cargo_

 _of mummified flowers?_

 _(You chose the colours of the sun,_

 _not the dried neutrals of shadow._

 _God knows you’ve tried.)_

 _Now here’s a good one:_

 _You’re lying on your deathbed._

 _You have one hour to live._

 _Who is it, exactly, you have needed_

 _all these years to forgive?_

 

A smack resounds through the crypt.  She stares at her hands, finds them empty, then, delayed, remembers that at the last words, she hurled the book across the room.  Now her hands begin to tremble.

 

“You want me to _forgive_?  Is this some kind of _sermon_ , Spike?”

 

“What?” he scrambles to his feet.  “No!  That’s not what I—“

 

“You, I guess.  I guess you want me to forgive you for all the people you’ve killed and for chaining me up and for being a vampire.  Then I’ll finally give you what you want, right?”

 

His eyes darken.  “Buffy—“

 

“Or maybe Mom?  Want me to forgive her for dying?  Or Giles for leaving?  Or Angel?  Or my dad?  Maybe you want me to forgive the people who pulled me out of heaven, is that it?  Who is it that William the Bloody thinks the Slayer needs to forgive?”

 

He reaches a hand out to her, almost brushes against her bare shoulder, but she jerks back before he can make contact.  “How _dare_ you tell me that I need to forgive!  You!”

 

That half-hurt, half-angry look flickers in his eyes for a moment, or maybe it’s just the candlelight.  Then he squares his shoulders.  She always thought that he looks bigger, more impressive when he’s naked, like he was _made_ to be naked, his natural state, but right now he just looks small, though his eyes and voice are like iron.  “I wasn’t telling you to do a goddamn thing, _Slayer_.  I just thought it would be nice to know that you aren’t alone.  That someone else has felt that way and made it through it.”  He grabs his jeans off the floor, wrenches them on violently.  “But never you mind.  Just forget you even read it, right, Slayer?”

 

And then, for the very first time, he’s the one who storms out the crypt, door banging behind him, leaving her feeling small and alone.

 

\--

 

 _Quite So New_

 

Sometimes, she pretends to fall asleep right after.

 

These moments are the only times she ever really relaxes—because she _has_ to, otherwise he’ll know.  He curls his body around hers, and she forces herself to stay limp in his arms.  She keeps her breaths even, her eyes closed but not screwed up tight.  She sometimes suspects that he knows that she’s pretending, but he would never, ever voice it: it would put an end to the charade, and that’s the last thing he wants.

 

He whispers horrible ( _sweet_ ) words to her, words that no demon could ever believe but that, like tiny drops of rain on drought-dried ground, give just the tiniest bit of nourishment to her soul.  He praises her beauty, her courage, her conviction ( _these days she feels ugly, cowardly, weak_ ).  He swears never to hurt her, never to leave her ( _all she’s ever been is broken and abandoned_ ).  He tells her he loves her ( _she doesn’t feel worthy of love_ ).

 

And this time?  This one moment—a Tuesday night in January as he cradles her to him and strokes her hair—he whispers her poetry.

 _“i like my body when it is with your  
body. It is so quite a new thing.  
Muscles better and nerves more.  
i like your body. i like what it does,  
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine  
of your body and its bones, and the trembling  
-firm-smooth ness and which i will  
again and again and again  
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,  
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz  
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes  
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,_

 _and possibly i like the thrill_

 _of under me you quite so new.”_

She wants so badly to weep, wants so badly to turn around and take him inside her ( _she’s throbbing with desire, with need; she never would have thought that poetry could turn her on that way, but it’s all about his voice, the raw edge to it, the unadulterated yearning.  Dawn was right.  He does have a nice voice_ ) and never let him go.

 

Instead, she lurches upright, pretending to have been jarred out of slip.  Despite his protests, she throws his arms off of, grabs her clothes, dresses, and leaves him.

 

But she cannot leave his words behind.  They echo in her ears for days afterwards.  She uses Willow’s laptop while the witch is out to look the poem up, searching with words she remembers ( _“eyes big love-crumbs” is the one that sticks out; he must think her eyes are giving him his crumb, but they_ aren’t _.  They aren’t_ ).  When she finds it, she prints it out covertly and memorizes it.

 

A day or two later, she begins to feel guilty—dirty—and burns the paper.

 

It doesn’t matter: the words are a part of her now, written on her bones, in her blood, and they ring in her head, always whispered in Spike’s rough voice.  The words, chanted in her head, provide a nice addition to the fantasies that get her through her days.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems featured in this chapter are "The Kill" by Carl Phillips and Sonnet XXXIX by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
> 
> The poetry book I mention in the first section is Helen Vendler's _Poems Poets Poetry_.  Most books _about_ poetry either suck all of the joy and beauty out of the whole experience or don't actually tell you anything useful.  This is by far the best book of its kind I've ever seen, and I heartily recommend it for anyone who wants to further their own poetic education.  Vendler, a Harvard professor, released the book in 1997, so I don't feel like it's a stretch that Buffy might have used it in her poetry class in college; it's one of the most revered text for such classes.  Also, I just love it. ;)  
> 

_No Little Sorrow_

It’s an often-forgotten fact that Buffy Summers is not stupid, nor is she incapable of learning.  Her SAT scores and the admittance letter to Northwestern that her mother kept safe in an envelope in her desk ( _Buffy found it during the bill-crazy days just after her resurrection and spent an hour or so crying over how much of a disappointment she was to her mother and how much_ more _disappointed Mom would be if she could see her oldest daughter now_ ) alone prove that.  Even if her friends, her family, her boyfriends, her Watcher forget that, she still has those two emblems to cling to.

 

She knows it’s the way she speaks ( _and often deliberately mispronounces words of more than three syllables_ ), not to mention her school grades, that make people think she’s dumb ( _well, that and the hair color, but then, she isn’t a natural blonde_ ).  Which isn’t exactly fair because even normal kids have problems keeping their grades up, and they don’t have the fate of the world resting on their shoulders and demanding their continual attention. 

 

All of this is to say that Buffy actually did pay attention in class when she could ( _when she wasn’t worried about the monster-of-the-week or that her sometimes-good vampire boyfriend was going to slaughter all of her friends_ ) and did learn some stuff.  It’s just that most of that stuff has no relevance to her life ( _now if they’d had a class on how to fight hellgods or how to balance slaying with your life or how to know if your best friend is abusing magic, that would have been a different story_ ) and so that knowledge lies dormant most of the time…until something jars it to life.

 

That jarring happens as she stands in the street in front of the Magic Box, watching Riley and his _wife_ ( _he would have a wife, wouldn’t he?  Just further proof that while Buffy-the-Slayer may leave quite an impression, Buffy-the-woman is completely forgettable_ ) ascend into the heavens ( _well, into a lit-up helicopter, but whatever_ ).

 

 _Deus ex machina_.  Look at that!  She even remembers the Latin words! ( _Or are they Greek?_ ) ( _Well, she doesn’t remember how to pronounce them; she just remembers what they looked like on the page of her English textbook junior year_ ).

 

It means ( _she’s pretty sure_ ) when something a little _too_ tidy wraps things up.  Things aren’t exactly wrapped up in her life ( _though, God, she wishes they were_ ), but Riley’s wifebot had just a few too many convenient answers.  Xander and Anya’s wedding photographer problem?  Solved.  Willow’s mysterious addiction to magic, though none of the Scoobies had ever even _heard_ that such a thing was possible?  Confirmed by Sam, or at least that’s what Willow whispered in her ear on the way to meeting up at the Magic Box.

 

Despite her protestations, Buffy hates Mrs. Finn.  She hates her for having the answers to Buffy’s friends’ problems.  She hates her even more for not having the answers to _Buffy_ ’s own issues.

 

She falters mid-step, remembering something, then walks even faster.   When they made a quick stop by Revello after blowing up Spike’s crypt ( _she doesn’t want to remember all the Persian rugs and aromatic candles that are gone now; she really doesn’t want to remember the way the gloating in his eyes turned to shocked betrayal and finally bitter resignation_ ), Sam had picked up one of the books left over from Buffy’s poetry class in college.

 

“Buffy?  Do you like poetry?”  Sam had sounded pleased but even more surprised, and that surprise had made Buffy want to punch her even as she replied sweetly that she did.

 

“This is a great book—I think it has one of my favorite poems in it.”  Sam flipped through the heavy white and blue paperback till she found what she was looking for.  “Yeah.  Here it is.  I think you’d really like it—you being the Slayer and all, you’d probably understand it even more than I do.  I’ll mark it: you should check it out when you have the chance.”

 

Of course Riley’s perfect wife likes poetry, too.  Probably has great taste.  Before Buffy could say anything to her, Riley got the call that says the chopper’s on its way, and they all headed out to meet up at the Magic Box, and Buffy forgot all about the poem.  Till now.

 

It can’t be…can it?  Sam with all her perfect answers _can’t_ have left the answer to the Slayer’s problem in the form of a poem.  That would be just too much of a stretch.

 

Oh, wait.  It’s Tuesday.

 

Leaving her friends behind, Buffy races home, tears up the steps and inside.  She grabs the book and rushes up to her room, locking the door before opening the book to the place Sam marked.

 

“The Kill,” it’s called, by Carl Phillips.  Of course.  It’s about killing, the one thing Buffy _doesn’t_ need help with: she’s plenty good enough at that on her own.  No answers here.

 

Sighing in disappointment, she sinks onto her bed and begins to read idly.  Within just a few words, the poem has her attention entirely.

 

 _The last time I gave my body up,_

 _to you, I was minded_

 _briefly what it is made of,_

 _what yours is, that_

 _I’d forgotten, the flesh_

 _which always_

 _I hold in plenty no_

 _little sorrow for because—oh, do_

 _but think on its predicament,_

 _and weep._

 _We cleave most entirely_

 _to what most we fear_

 _losing.  We fear loss_

 _because we understand_

 _the fact of it, its largeness, its_

 _utter indifference to whether_

 _we do, or don’t,_

 _ignore it.  But then, you_

 _were upon me, and then_

 _in me, soon the tokens_

 _I almost never can let go of, I’d_

 _again begin to, and would not_

 _miss them: the swan_

 _unfolding_

 _upward less on trust than_

 _because, simply, that’s_

 _what it does; and the leaves,_

 _leaving; a single arrow held_

 _back in the merciless_

 _patience which, in taking,_

 _aim, is everything; and last,_

 _as from a grove in_

 _flame toward any air_

 _more clear, the stag, but_

 _this time its bent_

 _head a chandelier, rushing_

 _for me, like some_

 _undisavowable_

 _distraction.  I looked back,_

 _and instead of you, saw_

 _the soul-at-labor-to-break-its-bonds_

 _that you’d become.  I tensed_

 _my bow:_

 _one animal at attack,_

 _the other—the other one_

 _suffering, and love would_

 _out all suffering—_

 

She’s feeling kind of shaky, kind of scared, kind of sick by the time she reaches the too-abrupt ending, and now she hates Sam even more.  Because this poem makes her feel like she should run—just run and keeping on running forever.  It makes her feel like she should confess ( _Tara’s absolution is the last thing that she wants—she wants penance_ ).  It makes her feel like she should take shower after shower after shower till she washes away forever even the memory of Spike’s body against hers.

 

Because she understands it, this strange, strange poem.  Oh, she can’t explain what half the phrases mean, the bits of sentences jumbled together, the lists of images, the abrupt starts and stops.  But the meaning, the feeling behind it, the experiences that would make someone write such a poem?  Oh, yeah.  She gets that, and all too well.

 

Giving her body up, holding no little sorrow for flesh, loss’s largeness and its pitiless indifference.  Love as a hunt.  But the fear comes from not knowing whether she’s hunter or whether Spike is.  Is he hunting her or is she hunting him?  Does it even matter at this point?

 

And then there’s the bit about the soul.  Spike doesn’t _have_ a soul, and who knows if she brought her own back with her?  But she knows the feeling of the soul trying to break free, knows it in ways no one else possibly could.

 

Yes, it’s the part about the soul, and the part about love outing suffering, and the ending ( _one thing she remembers from high school English is that a dash is not an appropriate way to end a sentence_ ) that terrify her.  But they also give her a strange, bone-deep sort of certainty, a kind she hasn’t felt in a long, long time.  A kind she thought had been lost to her forever after her resurrection.

 

She has to end it with Spike.  Really, really end it.  Not just say no and mean yes.  Not just walk away while swearing never to return—and then doing just that.  But really, really ending it ( _giving up his perfect body, his tender demon, his endless words_ ).

 

What they have is not love—it’s a hunt, the thing they both do better than anyone else.  And that hunt isn’t going to rid either one of them of suffering.  Not when he doesn’t have a soul at all.  It can’t. 

 

She repeats those words ( _itcan’titcan’titcan’t_ ) as she showers and changes into a soft purple blouse instead of the harsh black she wore when she went to him earlier.  He may not be able to love without his soul, but she has to admit that he does feel things deeply, and she should do this as kindly as she can.

 

As she walks slowly toward his crypt, planning the words she’ll say to him, she realizes _deus ex machina_ -Sam did indeed leave behind a poem that gave her an answer.

 

\--

 

 _Behold My Soul’s True Face_

 

She knows she has to go.

 

She wakes up with the sun tickling her eyes, and for once she’s holding him.  Strange that last night was about her comfort, that she asked him to hold her, and that she wakes up this way, cradling her to him in a way she never has before.  He held her before, those times during their affair when she pretended to be asleep; he’d poured his comfort into her then, as though his love could move from his body to hers in some sort of osmosis.  But she’s never been the one to comfort him.

 

It feels right.  It’s what she wanted to do when she found him in the First’s cave, tortured and tied to the wall.  It was during that time when the First had him, when she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to get him back, that she had recognized how much he meant to her.  She knew then that he was important to her, one of the most important people in her life, and she was never going to let him go again.  Seeing him there, beautiful even in his brokenness, the awe and love in his eyes had made her want to lead him to her bed once they arrived home, hold him against her all night.  She’d been too scared to allow herself to do so then, but she’s lost the last of that fear.

 

After all, Spike is all she has left.

 

Yesterday, every single person she cared about, every single person she trusted ( _well, the ones who hadn’t already left her_ ) turned their backs on her.  They threw back her hard-won judgment in her face, and then, worse still, they took even her home—the only thing her mother had left her besides a charge to care for her sister—from her.  She knows she’s stood alone, distancing herself from everyone ( _everyone but Spike_ ) for a long time now.  But she trusted that they understood why: so that she would be able to make the choices without a softening of her heart, so that if she has to sacrifice herself again, they won’t go through what they did last time.  She trusted them to understand that, and now she finds they don’t return that trust at all.

 

Didn’t they know her at all?  Even if they thought she was making the wrong decision, how could that justify throwing her out altogether?

 

She shoves the thought away; despite the softness she’s found in Spike’s arms, the pain of those memories are still too sharp, too exquisite.

 

 _Don’t think about the past, Buffy_ , she chastises herself.  _Think about the future._

 

Caleb.  He’s protecting something, and last night Spike confirmed her theory that it was at the orchard.  That’s why she has to go.  She has to find out what it is and figure out if she can use it against the First.  But the others were right about one thing: the last time she ventured such a mission, it ended in disaster.  She’s not willing to risk anyone else again ( _when she closes her eyes, she sees girls’ sightless gazes, the gaping hole where Xander’s eye used to smile at her_ ).  She’s not willing to risk Spike.

 

So she has to go without him.  Slip away as quietly as she can so that she can head out before he insists on coming along ( _which he will.  His loyalty is one of the things she most treasures about him, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t often inconvenient_ ).  She has to leave him to his rest.

 

But she knows what it’s like to wake up alone.  Knows how the pain of it warped something inside her till she thought it would never grow straight again.  She cannot do that to him.  She has to find a way to let him know that she’s going to something and not away from him.   And that she’ll return ( _if she can.  She doesn’t take anything for granted anymore_ ).

 

But how can she possibly tell him what last night meant to her?

 

She wracks her brain for words; they all fall hopelessly short.  And then she remembers the book.

 

After she’d laid down on the bed last night, before Spike arrived, she replayed the scene back at the home that was no longer hers again and again till she thought she would go as insane as Drusilla ever was ( _her only comfort was knowing that Spike would still love her anyways, sane or not_ ).  In an attempt to distract herself, she’d grabbed a book of the nightstand and started reading.

 

It was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ , and she’d skimmed her way through several of the poems.  She recognized the more famous ones—“How do I love thee?” and “The face of all the world is changed”—but it was one of the collection she’d never read before that captured her imagination before another wave of despair was over her and she tossed the book aside, curling up under her jacket and waiting ( _she knew Spike would come.  He always comes_ ). 

 

The words seem even more fitting now, and suddenly she’s buzzing with excitement.  She may not be able to find the words to tell him, but she can borrow someone else’s.  Besides, after all the times Spike tossed poetry her way, maybe it’s her turn to give some to him.

 

She slides his arms away from her slowly, regretting the loss of his weight wrapped around her.  It only takes a few moments of rummaging in drawers to find paper and a pen, and then she flips open the book till she finds the poem she’s looking for.  Then, she begins to copy the words.

 

She writes quickly but carefully, wanting him to know that she means each word, wanting him to know that she didn’t just rise from his arms and go skipping out to forget about him entirely.  She hopeshopeshopes that the care with which she writes these will let him know that he fills nearly her every thought, that he’s in her heart and she can’t imagine him leaving it, that he has seen her when no one else has—seen who she really is, all the secret places in herself that even she tries to ignore—and that he has blessed her by accepting each one.

 

 _Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace  
To look through and behind this mask of me  
(Against which years have beat thus blanchingly  
With their rains), and behold my soul's true face,  
The dim and weary witness of life's race,—  
Because thou hast the faith and love to see,  
Through that same soul's distracting lethargy,  
The patient angel waiting for a place  
In the new Heavens,—because nor sin nor woe,  
Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood,  
Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,  
Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,—  
Nothing repels thee, . . . Dearest, teach me so  
To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!_

 

She rereads them again, making sure she hasn’t misspelled anything or misplaced a comma, making sure there’s nothing here that he could misconstrue into some sort of rejection.

 

The words beautiful, but still lacking.  Still, they’re all she has.  He’s given her everything.  She wants to give a little back.

 

She places the sheet on the pillow next to his head, and with one longing glance back at him ( _it would be so easy to crawl back onto the bed, curl up once again in his arms, and never, ever leave_ ), she steps out into the rising sunshine.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems featured in this chapter are Sonnet III from _A Few Figs from Thistles_ by Edna St. Vincent Millay and "Fletcher McGee" by Edgar Lee Masters.  Thanks so much to the brilliant and talented Mere Ubu for finding "Fletcher McGee" for me.  
> 

_A Ghost in Marble_

She doesn’t cry.  Not till six months later when she’s in her 20th Century American Poetry class—the one she signed up for because she’d sort of enjoyed her Intro to Poetry back at UC Sunnydale and thought it would be fun to take an English class in addition to the more practical ones she’s trying out—and finds the poem.  She’s flipping through the back of the book while the professor rambles on about enjambment or tetrameter or something else she doesn’t care the least bit about.  The final pages of the textbook contain a variety of poems, and she turns the pages idly, scanning the words.

 

She should be paying attention; the Council is paying tuition, after all, and Giles gets cranky when he thinks someone is wasting his money.  But when they’d all gotten settled in Cleveland on the new Hellmouth in the wake of the destruction of Sunnydale, Giles had been thrilled when she announced that she wanted to go back to college.  She didn’t tell him that it was because she needed something to fill her days so that she wouldn’t think about all she’d lost, all she’d left behind ( _so that she won’t think about him_ ).  College seemed as good a choice as any, especially since Willow was going to try to graduate.  Still unsure of what a Slayer should be studying, she’d signed up for very diverse classes, hoping she’d hit upon something she really enjoyed.  And so she’s slid quite comfortably ( _if passionlessly_ ) into her life of studying by day, Slaying by night.

 

This poetry class is her favorite, though what she really likes is reading the poems and talking about what they mean, not analyzing the way they say it.  The professor Dr. Ray, a favorite on campus, insists that you can’t separate the two, but sometimes Buffy just can’t help but zoning out when she starts to talk about the more technical aspects, and as long as her grades don’t suffer, Buffy cuts herself some slack.

 

When her mind does drift, it usually drifts to patrolling ( _actually, it tries to drift to him, but she always jerks away from the thought; she isn’t prepared to deal with that yet_ ).  She’s thinking about where she’ll take the baby Slayers tonight, when one line on a page seems to jerk her gaze to it like a magnet, and once she starts reading, she can’t stop.

 

 _I think I should have loved you presently,  
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;  
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,  
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;  
And all my pretty follies flung aside  
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,  
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,  
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.  
I, that had been to you, had you remained,  
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,  
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,  
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,  
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew  
Who would have loved you in a day or two._

 

With the first line, a tear slips down her cheek.  By the time she reaches “all my pretty follies,” she’s shaking.  And by the last line, she’s sobbing so hard that she can’t hide it from the other students, the professor, the TA, who are all staring at her, some repulsed, some concerned, some curious, some annoyed.

 

She shoves her books into her bag, stumbles out of the classroom and into the empty hallway before she collapses on the floor and, weeping so hard she knows it’ll be some time before she finds the strength to stand again, she finally lets herself remember him.

 

“Miss Summers?”

 

Buffy’s head flies up, and she gulps back her tears, pushing her hair back behind her ears, wiping her tears away, trying to make herself presentable.  But her body is still shaking as she looks up at Dr. Ray.  Buffy glances at the classroom door, wondering if class if over already, but the door is closed, and now that she isn’t sobbing, she can hear the TA’s voice.

 

“Sorry—I’m sorry.  I just…”  Buffy trails off.  How can she possibly explain what memories those words shook loose in her?  How can anyone ever understand?

 

But Dr. Ray just shakes her head.  “Come on.  I think you need some tea.”  With that, she turns and starts walking down the hall to her office.

 

Buffy scrambles to her feet and follows the small woman.  Her cheeks are scarlet; she’s horrified that the professor she admires would catch her having such a breakdown.  And Dr. Ray’s normally beaming face had looked solemn.  Maybe she’s going to give her a lecture on disrupting the class.  But if that was it, would she be offering tea?  Buffy trails along behind her silently.

 

Once inside the small office ( _she and Giles would certainly get along, Buffy acknowledges as her eyes scan the two walls covered in bookshelves nearly sagging under the weight of all the books they’re holding up_ ), Dr. Ray plugs in the small electric kettle and reaches for two mugs sitting on the windowsill. 

 

Buffy stands in the middle of the room, awkward and unsure.  She half wants to tell the professor that she doesn’t drink tea, but after years with Giles, she knows that the offering is what tea drinkers do in order to show their concern and give comfort.  She’ll grit her teeth and swallow.

 

“Why don’t you tell me what set you off, Buffy,” Dr. Ray suggests while offering her a seat.

 

Buffy sinks down onto the chair and finds that she really, really wants to tell her.  She hasn’t had many conversations with the professor, but she adores the older woman: she’s passionate about her subject, enthusiastic about learning, and fair in every way.  Plus, she laughs more in the classroom than any other teacher Buffy’s ever had.  All her other teachers ( _Walsh_ ) took learning so seriously.  Dr. Ray believes it to be a joy.

 

“I found this poem.  About…loving someone in a day or two.”

 

Dr. Ray nods once, smiling now.  “Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

 

“Sure.  And, well, it reminded me of this guy.”

 

“They often do, don’t they?”

 

“Oh, yeah.”  She looks down at her hands folded in her lap and listens to the kettle hiss as the water starts to boil.  “We went through a lot of bad times together.  Hurt each other pretty horribly.  But he loved me, and he completely changed who he was so that he could be a person I could love.  And…I started to.  But I never really got a chance to actually love him, to let him know.  I told him right before he died, but…”  The tears have returned, and she wipes them away furiously as she hiccups out the last few words.  “It was too late.  He thought I was only saying it because he died.”

 

“Here, sweetheart.”  Dr. Ray holds out a box of Kleenexes, and Buffy grabs one gratefully.  “I’m so sorry you lost him.”

 

“All he wanted was for me to love him back, and I was finally ready to do it…and now I’ll never get the chance.”  She blows her nose noisily and finally looks up at her professor.  “I’m sorry.  It’s so stupid to get this way over a poem.”

 

“Of course it isn’t.  Poems exist to help us see the truth.”  The kettle dings, signaling that the water is ready, and Dr. Ray rises to grab the tea bags.  “That’s the purest, simplest joy of poetry,” she continues, and Buffy has to fight the impulse to tell her that in her experience, pleasure had rarely been pure and never been simple.  “Finding yourself in someone else’s words.  Confirmation that you’re not alone—not crazy, not wrong—someone else feels exactly the same way.”

 

Those words hurt perhaps more than the poem itself did; they remind her far too much of the time in his crypt that Spike tried to give her that poem about depression and she rejected it ( _rejected him_ ).  “I guess.”

 

“They also sometimes provide a mirror, a chance to see ourselves more clearly.  That’s what this poem did for you, didn’t it?”

 

Buffy takes the cup of tea from her and gratefully begins to stir in the honey she’s offered.  “Yeah.  I hadn’t really mourned him, I guess.  I miss him _so much_ it hurts to breathe, but I tried to ignore it.  And I didn’t realize that I had to mourn for _myself_ as well.  For the relationship we never really got to have and the love I never got to give him.”  The part of her that isn’t full of sorrow is kind of amazed that she managed to verbalize that; she never had before, and it seems more eloquent than anything else she’s ever said.  It also seems more true.

 

“Then that poem was a gift.  It gave you a way of facing the truth when you might not have been able to.”

 

“But what does the truth matter now?  I know now just how much he means—meant—to me, but there’s nothing I can do about it.  He’s gone.”

 

Dr. Ray takes a sip of her own tea, then puts the cup down on the desk between them.  “Buffy, if he really loved you, he would want you to know and embrace the truth of yourself.  That’s what those who love us really do: they see us all, the good and the bad, and accept all of those aspects of ourselves and make it easier for us to do the same.  Was he the kind of person who would have wanted you to do that?”

 

 _Nobody_ has ever been that kind of person more than Spike was.  “Yeah.  He was.”

 

“Then this revelation isn’t wasted.  It’s what he would have wanted for you.  He may not have suspected that it would come in the form of a poem—“

 

Buffy laughs out loud at that.  “Oh, he would have.  He definitely would have.”  The story of her life with Spike, Buffy realizes, is written in poetry, not prose.  If he could have designed it, he would have designed it just this way.

 

She finishes the last of her tea, rises and hands the mug back to Dr. Ray.  “Thank you so much.  I’m so sorry for disrupting class.”

 

“Sweetheart, there are things much more important than classes.  Telling ourselves the truth and mourning those we love are definitely two of those things.  Now you go on.  Spend some of that time you’ve never taken to mourn.  Just have your explication turned in next Thursday, all right?  And if you want to change the poem you already selected to something a little more pertinent….”  She raises her eyebrows expectantly, and Buffy laughs again.

 

“Yeah.  I just might do that.”

 

She closes the door behind her and walks slowly down the empty hallway to where she left her things.  She throws her purse over her shoulder and then bends to pick up the book.  She looks down at the poem again.  Yes.  Now is the time to tell herself the truth.  She’s tired of lies.

 

\--

 

 _Like a Fevered Moon_

 

“Who?”

 

“Charles Gunn,” the voice says again.  The name sounds familiar, but Buffy can’t place it.  “I work with Angel.”

 

“Oh!”  Her hand tightens around the phone even as her heart sinks.  The news had reached the Council that there were four survivors of the L.A. battle, but she has yet to talk with any of them.  She had hoped that if they made it through, it would be Spike who….  Never mind that now.  Briskly, she continues.  “How are you?  Is there anything I can do for you?”

 

“More like something I’m doing for you,” he replies to Buffy’s confusion.  “It’s about Spike.”

 

She feels like her heart is going to shatter all over again as a thousand different emotions rush through her.  Joy, hurt, fear, betrayal, love, sorrow…they all clamor for her attention.  But she can’t deal with any of them, not now.  Instead, she makes her voice do that pleasantly indifferent thing Giles is so good at.  “Oh?  I don’t see how anything to do with him is any of my business.”

 

“Oh, please.  Like you don’t know he’s in love with you.”

 

Her heart jumps a little—if someone else can see it, surely that means…?  But no.  No.  If he really still loved her, he’d…. “I think Spike’s made it more than clear that he doesn’t have any interest in me.”

 

When Andrew made a stop in Cleveland after picking up Dana from L.A. and before returning to Rome, he kept the secret for eight whole days, which is pretty damn impressive now that Buffy thinks about it—he’d never been able to keep the plot of the latest _Star Wars_ movie to himself for more than five minutes, never mind something as big as Spike’s return from the dust.  When the truth finally came out, she was overwhelmed by a mixture of elation and betrayal more powerful than any she’d ever felt.  For him to be alive again was all that she wanted, all that she’d dreamed of since the day she lost him.  But he didn’t _tell_ her.  He chose to stay there in L.A. with a vampire he felt nothing but bitterness toward instead of returning to her.  He had to know that she would find out from Andrew, and she had to believe that that was his way of telling her that he’d moved on.

 

Well, so has she.  She doesn’t let herself think about him anymore, doesn’t read that poem she found in class ( _doesn’t dream of telling him that she got an A on her explication_ ), doesn’t self-flagellate about her words being too little too late.  She just goes to class, trains the younger Slayers, goes out patrolling, and returns home to fall asleep in her lonely bed.  Sooner or later, she tells herself, she’ll quit missing him.

 

“Well, you’re wrong about that.”

 

“Oh, so he’s _told_ you that he still loves me?”

 

“Well, no.”

 

“See?”

 

“There’s something else.  I want you to check your email.”

 

“ _What_?”

 

“I found your email address in some of Wes’s old things, and I sent you something.  Are you close to a computer?”

 

Confused but intrigued, she crosses her room to the laptop sitting open on her desk.  She’d been in the middle of history homework when she got this call, and the browser is still open to a website devoted to the Egyptian gods.  She opens another tab and then her email.  When she opens the letter from Charles, she stares blankly at the words.

 

“What’s this?”

 

“It’s a poem.”

 

God, he’s worse than Dawn.  “I can _see_ that.  Why did you send it to me?”

 

Charles Gunn sighs as though she’s hopelessly thick.  “We’ve spent the last couple of weeks laying low, holed up in Spike’s apartment—the Senior Partners are still after us; they’re not gonna let this thing go anytime soon.  Anyway, we haven’t had much to do besides watch TV, play videogames, and eat takeout, so you start to notice things.  _I_ noticed that he keeps opening this book to just one page and reading it over and over again.  While he was sleeping, I swiped the book and found the page he’d marked.  This is the poem he’s been reading.  I transcribed it for you.  I think it’ll refute your theory that he doesn’t think about you anymore.”

 

Dazed, she reads the words.  Reads them again.  And a third time.

 

 _She took my strength by minutes,_

 _She took my life by hours,_

 _She drained me like a fevered moon_

 _That saps the spinning world._

 _The days went by like shadows,_

 _The minutes wheeled like stars._

 _She took the pity from my heart,_

 _And made it into smiles._

 _She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,_

 _My secret thoughts were fingers:_

 _They flew behind her pensive brow_

 _And lined it deep with pain._

 _They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,_

 _And drooped the eyes with sorrow._

 _My soul had entered in the clay,_

 _Fighting like seven devils._

 _It was not mine, it was not hers;_

 _She held it, but its struggles_

 _Modeled a face she hated,_

 _And a face I feared to see._

 _I beat the windows, shook the bolts._

 _I hid me in a corner--_

 _And then she died and haunted me,_

 _And hunted me for life._

 

Oh, God.  It’s so _them_.  A few of the events out of order—and he’s the one that died and haunted her, at least this time around—but the emotions, even the mention of his soul: she sees so much of them there.

 

Dr. Ray’s words echo in her mind:  _They also sometimes provide a mirror, a chance to see ourselves more clearly…_ _Confirmation that you’re not alone—not crazy, not wrong—someone else feels exactly the same way._

 

The words aren’t pretty; they’re cruel and unmerciful, damning for both of them.  But that doesn’t matter.  _We have something, Buffy. It's _not pretty_ , but it's __real_ _, and there's nothing either one of us can do about it._   He’s thinking about her.  He wouldn’t be reading that poem if he didn’t still care.  If he didn’t still care, those words would mean nothing to him.  Which means…

 

“Buffy?  You there?”

 

“Huh?  Oh.  Yeah.  I’m here.  Say, Charles?  Can you give me the address of where you’re staying?  And can you make sure that by the time I get there, Spike’s alone?”

 

She doesn’t even pack a bag, just uses Giles’s connections to hop on a plane.  The flight is only a few hours, but it feels like eons, and by the time they set down at LAX, she’s so keyed up that she has the taxi pull over a few miles from the apartment so that she can run the rest of the way.

 

But when she reaches his door, she can’t quite bring herself to knock.  All the what ifs and accusations start clamoring in her head again.  She’s just about to turn to go when the door flies open.

 

And there’s Spike, beautiful and real, with that look in his eyes she saw as she walked down the stairs of her house the night she was resurrected.  And suddenly nothing else matters.  Not the pain they put each other through, catalogued in that poem.  Not the fact that he didn’t let her know he was alive.  Nothing except that he is here.  God or the universe or the Powers or whatever: someone gave him back to her.

 

“Hello, Spike,” she says.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems featured in this chapter are "Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed" by John Donne (my favorite poet), a few lines of "may i feel said he" by e.e. cummings (you should look up the rest of it; it's pretty fun), and "Fate slew Him but He did not drop" by Emily Dickinson.

_As Souls Unbodied_   


“Poetry can’t be sexy,” Buffy says with a giggle.

 

It’s after.  After tears and punches and shouts and kisses and accusations and vows and  demands—though not necessarily in that order.  Somehow, in a turn in conversation that she can’t quite trace but that doesn’t surprise Buffy in the slightest, Spike happened to mention a “sexy poem.”  And now she’s denying that there is such a thing.

 

“Poems can be sweet or sad or angry or swooningly romantic.  But they can’t be sexy.”  It’s a blatant lie.  All she has to do is close her eyes, and she’s back in Sunnydale, back in his crypt with his naked body wrapped around hers, his erotic words being rasped in her ears ( _“i like my body with your body…”_ ).  She shifts a little, feeling a tingling below her belt.

 

Still, it’s much more fun to argue with him about something like this, make him prove it, make him convince her.  They’ve moved beyond all the harsh emotions ( _she’d never known that relief and joy can be as hard-edged as anger and hurt_ ) now, and they’ve finally reached playful.

 

And ooooh, yeah.  Buffy’s ready to play.

 

Spike throws his hands up in the air.  “Of course it can, you barmy bint! There’s nothin’ sexier than poetry!”

 

She leans forward so that her breath fans against him and her lips brush against his as she speaks.  Looking him straight in the eye, she arches a brow.  “Prove it.”

 

A light flares in his eyes before he takes a step back and straightens.  “Right then.”

 

Then he reaches out and takes her hands, and, walking backwards, leads her towards the bedroom area of the small apartment ( _has he really been living in a place so bare and cold?  Another basement.  It’s lacking the rugs and candles, pillows and books that made the crypt so…comfy_ ).  He lowers his voice till it enters the tone she mentally refers to has his “bedroom voice”—rough-edged and husky.

 

 _“C_ _OME, madam, come, all rest my powers defy ;  
Until I labour, I in labour lie.  
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,  
Is tired with standing, though he never fight.”_

She shivers at the words and lets her hands drop to her sides as he releases them.  Then his hands are stealing up, and gently but firmly, he unfastens her belt.  His fingers brush against the skin of her midriff as he does, and goosebumps rise on her sensitive skin.

 _  
”Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,  
But a far fairer world encompassing.”_

He jerks it out of the loops, and it twists like a snake in the air before he throws it casually over his shoulder.  Buffy bites back a gasp.

 _  
”Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,  
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopp'd there. “_

 

Then his hands are back, unbuttoning her jacket and slipping it off of her shoulders.  His eyes are half-shut, heavy-lidded, and the combination of his seductive words and the gleam in his eyes has her tingling with anticipation.

 _“Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime  
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.”_

One by one, he slips the buttons of her blouse from their holes, and the tips of his fingers against the skin of her chest and stomach set her skin afire wherever they brush against her.  He slides the silk of her blouse off her shoulders, his big palms molding to her shoulders, and she’s suddenly discovering that shoulders can indeed be erogenous zones.

 

“Spike,” she whines.  “ _Touch_ me.”

 

“Shhhh,” he murmurs.  “Patience, yeah?  I’m showing you what poetry can do.”

 

She reaches out eagerly, wanting to return the favor and remove the black t-shirt that is currently covering his beautiful torso ( _that t-shirt deserves to be ripped apart violently, punished for keeping her eyes and hands from his skin_ ), but he gently smacks her hands away and turns to her skirt.

 _  
”Off with that happy busk, which I envy,  
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh._

 _Your gown going off such beauteous state reveals,  
As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.”_

He unzips the zipper so slowly that she can hear each tooth giving way, and the sound catapults her back to their first time, when it was the sound of his zipper being giving way under her hands that made it all seem real.  It had sounded so loud in that collapsing room, and at the moment, she had thought it the sexiest sound in the world.  She would still think so, except that Spike is still talking.

 _  
”Off with your wiry coronet, and show  
The hairy diadems which on you do grow.”_

As he speaks, he slips his hands into her hair, pulling out the elastic band that held it up, then running his fingers through it as she shakes her head to get rid of the tangles.  His fingers are rough, calloused, and they catch on the silk, but then they’re back, massaging her scalp and she wants to collapse into a puddle of goo.  Nobody knows how to massage like he does, and he’s proficient at caressing every inch of her body.

 

“Sooo good,” she moans.  Her scalp feel warm under his hands, and her shoulders still feel the warmth of his hands, and each place his fingers brushed is still glowing with fire.  She can’t imagine how she’s going to feel when he actually _touches_ her.

He grabs her shoulders again, pushing her back toward the bed.  It hits the back of her knees, and she sits down abruptly.  She nearly groans as he bends down at her feet.

 _“Off with your hose and shoes ; then softly tread  
In this love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.”_

He slips each shoe off of her feet, then massages them, the arch, the heel, her toes.  Even as he coaxes the tension away, sparks shoot up from her feet to every other inch of her body.  He slowly slides his hands up her calves, kneading the muscle as he goes.

Then he rises, and again, his hands return to their familiar place at her shoulders, and he eases her down onto the bed.  She lays there as he climbs up to join her.

 _  
”In such white robes heaven's angels used to be  
Revealed to men ; thou, angel, bring'st with thee  
A heaven-like Mahomet's paradise…”_

 

He stretches out alongside her, propping his head up with one hand.  The other worms its way underneath her body to find the clasp of her bra; with a snap, it gives way.  He slides it off her shoulders and tosses it away.

 

 _“…and though  
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know  
By this these angels from an evil sprite ;  
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.”_

Then he turns attention to her panties.  He grasps the sides, his fingers once again setting her on fire where they brush against her hips, then he slides the lace down slowly, slowly, slowly: down her thighs, over her knees, past her feet, never once touching her body.

 

“ _Spike_!”

 

“Shhh,” he admonishes her again.  “This is where it gets good.”

 

She moans at the thought.

 _  
    “Licence my roving hands, and let them go  
Before, behind, between, above, below.”_

 

And he does.  Drags the ends of his finger tips over her hair, her face, her breasts, her stomach, lower and lower and lower, till just the tips have touched her nearly everywhere, and he’s set her on fire.  She’s breathing so hard now that she can barely gasp out his name, but she does, and his eyes flash in response.

 _  
”O, my America, my Newfoundland,  
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,  
My mine of precious stones, my empery ;  
How am I blest in thus discovering thee !  
To enter in these bonds, is to be free ;  
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.”_

Now his mouth follows the path of his hands, dropping kisses over every inch of her body between every few words of the poem.  She’s barely paying attention to the words now, just hears the tone above the ringing in her ears as he explores her body deliberately, patiently, thoroughly.  She can’t stop her gasps and moans, though he’s still just _teasing_!

And then he’s gone.

 

She blinks open eyes she hadn’t known were closed, staring around dazed as she tries to calm the pounding of her heart and the rushing of her blood.

 

“Spike?  Wha—?”

 

Oh.  _Ooooh_.

 

He’s standing at the foot of the bed, slowly stripping off his own clothes, revealing his beautiful, familiar body to her with the accompaniment of the sensuous words.  He draws the shirt slowly over his head, revealing inch by inch the pale expanse of his torso.  Her mouth waters as she watches him.

 _  
“ Full nakedness !  All joys are due to thee ;  
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be  
To taste whole joys.   Gems which you women use  
Are like Atlanta's ball cast in men's views ;  
That, when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,  
His earthly soul might court that, not them.”_

Now he unbuttons, unzips his pants every bit as deliberately as he did her skirt, and she knows he’s thinking back to their night in the collapsing house, too.  She can’t rip her eyes away from where he’s lowering his pants, though she knows that if she did, his eyes would be burning into her.

 _  
“Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made  
For laymen, are all women thus array'd.  
Themselves are only mystic books, which we  
—Whom their imputed grace will dignify—  
Must see reveal'd…”   _

He stands for a few moments, letting her admire him, his eyes smoldering as she runs her own over his body.

 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” she whispers.

“No.  _You_ are.”  He strides back over to the bed, and she feels the mattress give under his weight as he once again stretches out beside her, slipping his hands between her legs and driving her mad as he whispers the final words low and raspy into her ears.

 _“…Then, since that I may know,  
As liberally as to thy midwife show  
Thyself ; cast all, yea, this white linen hence ;  
There is no penance due to innocence :  
To teach thee, I am naked first ; why then,  
What needst thou have more covering than a man?”_

 __“Now, Spike!” she commands, unable to bear it another moment, and then he’s within her, and they’re both finally, finally home.

 

Hours later, he’s driving her crazy all over again.

 

“Fine!  Fine!” she shrieks through bursts of laughter as his deft fingers tickler her ribs, the bottoms of her feet.  “I give in!  You were right!  I was wrong!  Poetry can be very, _very_ sexy!”

 

Smirking, he takes pity on her and rolls her over till she’s lying sprawled on top of him.  “Never thought I’d live to see the day when the Slayer admits that she was wrong.”

 

She slaps his bare chest, then lays her cheeks where she’d slapped.  “Oh, whatever.  Like you’re any better about that.”

 

“Maybe not.  But I’m right about this, and you’re not going to like it.”

 

She raises up a bit and rests her chin on chest so that she can meet his eyes.  “You better not say what I think you’re going to say.”

 

He closes his eyes for a moment.  “You have to go, Buffy.  The Senior Partners—”

 

She shoots upright.  “Oh, I cannot believe this!  You want me to go _now_?”

 

He growls low in his throat and jerks her back down, wrapping his arms around her tight so she can’t escape from him.  “I want you to be with me _always_.  I never want to let you out of my sight.  But the Senior Partners have me in theirs.  Somethin’s coming, Buffy.  Somethin’ big.  We pissed them off, and they’re not going to let it go.”

 

“Exactly.  You fought my fight, now I want to fight yours.  We can call in backup—the Slayers will come if we ask.”

 

That gives him pause.  “‘Ask’?”

 

She nods fiercely.  “The Council doesn’t give orders anymore.  Just makes requests.”  He lifts an eyebrow.  “Sometimes very insistent ones,” she admits.  “But it doesn’t matter if none of them come.  I lost you once.  I won’t go through that again.”

 

“Buffy—“

 

“No more discussion.  I’m staying.”  Then she lets her voice sink low and says silkily, “I’ve been taking a poetry class.  I’ve learned all kinds of poems.  Want to hear one of my favorites?”

 

He seems both amused and turned on at the same time, and she loves that she can do that to him.  “Always.”

 

She slides her hand down between their bodies, and laughs softly when Spike’s eyes go wide.  “ _May I feel said he. I’ll squeal said she…”_

 _  
_“Oh, Buffy.  You _are_ the perfect woman for me.”

 

\---

 _When Her Worst Was Done_

When she wakes, she lays for a while in the warmth of the dark, listening to his heart pound beneath her ear.  The heat of him, the rise and fall of his chest, and especially the sound of his heart beating…it’s all so new, and she revels in the novelty.

 

After a while, she becomes aware of his stomach growling, and she laughs softly as she slips out of his arms, rising and slipping into a robe.  Belting it around her waist, she eases out of the bedroom as quietly as she can and pads down the hall to the kitchen.  She loves taking care of him almost as much as he loves taking care of her, and she’s learned to anticipate his needs well—with the help of a few stomach gurgles.  She’s had to learn to cook since the end of Sunnydale, living alone in the apartment in Cleveland, and even though it has two inhabitants now, she still enjoys doing the cooking herself.  She never would have thought that she’d enjoy it, but she finds it relaxing, almost therapeutic.

 

An omelet, she decides.  Something simple now, nothing fancy, though she has tomatoes and peppers and ham as well as cheese in the fridge.  She’s just about to open it when she glances over at the front door and sees a square of white lying just in front of it.

 

It’s an envelope, she discovers as she picks it up, and her name is written on it in Giles’s precise script.  With a sigh, she tears it open, certain that it’s an “insistent request” that she come over and help work out the schedule for this week’s patrolling.

 

But her eyes fill with tears at the words she finds there.

 

 _My dear child,_

 _I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you’ve returned unharmed, though I’ve come to realize that if anyone can emerge triumphant from impossible situations, it’s you.  I came across this poem while you were gone, and it seemed to me to be quite fitting for your—and Spike’s—current situation.  I thought I would pass it along.  When you’re settled in, do come and see me as soon as possible so that we can get patrolling schedules worked out for this week._

 _All my love,_

 _Giles_

She laughs a little as she realizes that she was right about the scheduling.  She sets the letter to the side and pulls out the other sheet of paper.

 

She gasps as she reads the words, wondering at their perfection.  Giles was understating it ( _well, he_ is _British_ ): these words are nearly prophetic.  She can’t wait to show them to Spike.

 

She makes a mental note to call Giles as soon as she can, because she recognizes the poem for what it is: a gesture.  This is his way of asking for forgiveness for trying to have Spike killed that last year in Sunnydale, and she can’t imagine a more beautiful way of doing so.  As she rereads the words, all the secret resentment she’d harbored toward him slips away, and she finds that, once again, she can love him without reservation.

 

She sets the poem carefully on a tray and then busies herself whipping up the omelet, humming as she does so.  When it’s finished, the smell permeating the small apartment, she pours a glass of orange juice and arranges the tray.

 

Spike blinks sleepily at her as she opens the door.  “Breakfast in bed?” she suggests, hoping that she’ll get to devour _him_ after he’s consumed his food—she’s never seen him look so rumpled and delicious.

 

“Love, it’s the middle of the night.  Aren’t we supposed to be tryin’ to get me on real-boy schedule?  You know, with the wakin’ in the mornin’ and sleepin’ at night?”

 

She settles herself down on the bed beside him, leaning back against the pillows.  “A normal schedule’s overrated.  Besides, you’re living with the Slayer.  It’s not like you really _need_ to learn to be not-a-creature-of-the-night.  I’m about as nocturnal as they come.”

 

“Well, I won’t argue with the beautiful woman bringin’ me food.  That smells bloody marvelous, pet.”

 

“Bet it tastes even better.  Oh!  I forgot a fork!”

 

“Never you mind.  ‘ll just eat it with my fingers.  Always was one to play with my food.”  He waggles his eyebrows at her, but she just rolls her eyes.

 

“Well, I wanted some of it, too,” she pouts as he picks apart the omelet and starts popping bits of it into his mouth.

 

“I can take care of that,” he says, bringing a piece to her lips.  She rolls her eyes again, but lets him feed her.

 

“What’s the note, love?” he asks.

 

She swallows quickly, then reaches over to take a sip of orange juice.  “Giles sent it by.”

 

“Oh, yeah? Just wantin’ you to help him work out the schedule, then?”

 

“Nope.  It’s about you.”

 

“Me?”  He reaches out to pick it up, but she smacks his hand away.

 

“Uh-uh.  I’m going to read it to you.”

 

He tilts his head in that absolutely adorable way.  “Why?”

 

“Because these words are powerful.  I want to give them to you.”

 

He watches, amused, as she settles herself further and unfolds the paper to read.

 

“Listen carefully,” she instructs.  “She wrote this one about you.”  With a deep breath, she begins.

 

 _“Fate slew Him, but He did not drop --  
She felled -- He did not fall --  
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes --  
He neutralized them all --_

 _She stung Him -- sapped His firm Advance --  
But when Her Worst was done  
And He -- unmoved regarded Her --  
Acknowledged Him a Man.”_

 

He stares at her for a long moment after she finishes, his face unreadable.  The silence unsettles her a bit, so she speaks quickly to fill it up.  “Don’t you see?  I mean, sure, this poem is about how you proved yourself a champion and then fought that apocalyptic battle against the Senior Partners—with my help, of course—and _won_ and how you got the Shanshu because of it.  But it’s also about me.  Make that ‘she’ Buffy Summers instead of fate, and it still works.  I threw everything I had at you—every horrible, ugly thing—and you took it all.  You were still standing at the end.  And that’s how I knew you were a man— _the_ man for me.  It doesn’t matter that you have a beating heart and can go out in the daylight and all that.  _You_ —who you are, how you try—that’s what I love, and—“

 

But anything further she might have to say is cut off as he tackles her back onto the bed.  She pulls back from his kiss, gasping for breath, just long enough to say, “Yes.  You’re a man.  You’re _my_ man.”

 

And she’s got the rest of her life—and his—to spend proving it to him.

 


End file.
